DVD Length

[mronion]

How long can a DVD be, is it 90mins or can you burn longer.
Thank You

[GeorgeW]

You can burn a video that is longer than 90 minutes onto a DVD5 (single layer disc). It's all about how the video is compressed (the bitrate for video and audio).

The quality is the key -- in general, the more you compress, the quality will start to degrade. Alot depends on your encoding method/settings and the quality of your video source...

[Trevor Andrew]

Hi
To add to Georges comments

as a guide

Using a bitrate of 8000 kbps will get you 60 minutes to a single layer disc.(high quality Dvd)
At 6000 kbps you will get about 90 minute (very good quality dvd)
At 4000 kbps 120 minutes (good quality equivalent to Vhs)


Trevor

[DaveO]

Hi
To add to Georges comments

as a guide

Using a bitrate of 8000 kbps will get you 60 minutes to a single layer disc.(high quality Dvd)
At 6000 kbps you will get about 90 minute (very good quality dvd)
At 4000 kbps 120 minutes (good quality equivalent to Vhs)


Trevor

That is interesting and poses several questions for me. I have some Sony DVD-R's and they have a logo on the front that includes "120 min". I sort of assumed that meant two hours was the normal maximum capacity at what I would call DVD film quality. Is that not so?

I am currently archiving some old 8mm standard (not Hi-eight) video tapes.

What I am doing is this:

Digitise the 8mm tape through my mini-dv camera capturing using VS 9 in dv format.

Do some basic editing to remove the guff and add a few titles. Nothing fancy.

Output the dv from VS 9 back to the mini-dv camera to record the footage to mini-dv tape. This is than my Archive/safe store medium and gives me a digital representation of my old 8mm footage off the PC for storing away.

What I then want to do is make some DVD's for convenience so I can view them. If they get damaged I can always get the footage back off the mini-dv tape archive and redo the DVD.

Anyway, given what you say above about quality I am now wondering when I get to the DVD authoring stage what length of DVD to go for. Given the source is pretty low band would authoring one-hour DVD's give me a better picture over two-hour ones?

Moving on, I am also intending to author some DVD's from footage shot natively on mini-dv tape. Obviously this is higher quality but now I am also wondering what rate to use for DVD's that come from a mini-dv source.

I had assumed that if you captured in DV format, edited in it and then output from DV format to DVD the quality that went onto DVD was equal to the source material. Is that not so in VS 9? What I mean is that the default way it works is that quality is maintained throughout the process from capture to authoring.

I would not want it performing compression because it thought I wanted to fit "too much" onto a DVD.

How does VS 9 handle this? If I have a long movie that would require compression to fit on a single layer DVD would it compress it without telling me?

I'd like to be able to control quality rather than have the program decide to do it for me on the fly.

Dave

[GeorgeW]

To create a valid DVD Structure (for playing in a dvd player), your dv video will always be compressed to a valid dvd format -- mpeg-1 or mpeg-2...

[DaveO]

To create a valid DVD Structure (for playing in a dvd player), your dv video will always be compressed to a valid dvd format -- mpeg-1 or mpeg-2...

But aren't there different level of compression within these two formats?

I suppose one of the questions I am asking is can you get a 1:1 mapping quality-wise from a mini-dv tape onto a DVD. If you see what I mean.

If you can, what bitrate rate do you need adopt?

Dave

[Trevor Andrew]

Hi Dave

As I see it

What you are doing is perfect, you are capturing to Dv-Avi editing and saving/exporting the Avi back to your tape to archive. Perfect.

When you come to burn a Dvd you have to convert the Avi to Mpeg 2.(pal/ntsc—Dvd)
This is best done in Share Create Video File. Here you control the quality. But you are limited by the amount of data a disc will hold.

Ok

A single layer Dvd holds 4.3 Gb of data.
A 60 minute video using a bit rate of 8000 kbps will produce a file (mpeg2) about 4.3 Gb in size.
It will fit on the disc.
Different audio settings use a varying amount of data. Digital Dolby and Mpeg Audio will produce a smaller file compared to Ntsc Audio. This allows you to fit more video footage to a dvd, About 70 minutes at 8000kbps.

Playing a Vhs tape to me is very good quality, the equivalent quality can be produced by using a data rate of 4000 kbps. This rate will allow you to burn a dvd 120 minutes long.

Bit rate calculators can be used to establish your settings.
I like this one :-- http://dvd-hq.info/Calculator.html

Once you have made a few dvd’s you won’t need the calculator, you will know.

If you are to create your own video file, you will need to use’Custom’ but better still use the Make Movie Manager to make your own templates. Once made they show in the Create Video File Window above ‘Custom’

Hope this Helps

Trevor

[DaveO]

Hi Dave
What you are doing is perfect, you are capturing to Dv-Avi editing and saving/exporting the Avi back to your tape to archive. Perfect.

That is good to know! I sort of came by that methodology by accident but I got there in the end.

A single layer Dvd holds 4.3 Gb of data.
A 60 minute video using a bit rate of 8000 kbps will produce a file (mpeg2) about 4.3 Gb in size.
It will fit on the disc.
Different audio settings use a varying amount of data. Digital Dolby and Mpeg Audio will produce a smaller file compared to Ntsc Audio. This allows you to fit more video footage to a dvd, About 70 minutes at 8000kbps.

Playing a Vhs tape to me is very good quality, the equivalent quality can be produced by using a data rate of 4000 kbps. This rate will allow you to burn a dvd 120 minutes long.

I am with you now. Most of my 8mm tapes are 90 minutes long or less. My mini-dv tapes 60 minutes. I was expecting to be able to get a couple of hours footage on a DVD but I didn't realise that quality would be at VHS level if I did.

If you are to create your own video file, you will need to use’Custom’ but better still use the Make Movie Manager to make your own templates. Once made they show in the Create Video File Window above ‘Custom’

I shall investigate this tonight.

Hope this Helps

It does indeed. Thank you very much.

Dave

[cold2four]

ok I caused a lot of you to have a great discussion on burning movies, thats great. A few of you hit the mark with compression but I still have no idea how to do it. When you capture a movie you open the program, turn on the movie then hit capture, then wait for the movie to run it's 2 hours then turn the capture off. There is no way to make settings before you capture. So, are you saying that I compress the movie file after I have captured it and if so where do I do this and how. Thanks everybody.

[Trevor Andrew]

Hi cold2four

More reading I am afraid.

Read the top posting ‘Recommended Procedure’
http://phpbb.ulead.com.tw/EN/viewtopic.php?t=27

Read My Quick Guides to Mpeg from the link below.
This gives some general settings and explains how to use them.

Ok

Capturing to Mpeg is very demanding on your pc.
You may encounter the ‘Empty Transcode Buffer’. This is used to store data when your pc cannot keep up with the re-coding of the video, which has to be done in real time as the tape is playing.

You may be best to capture short sections, say 15mins each. If you have commercials on the tape stop capture during those.

Trevor

[skier-hughes]

To create a valid DVD Structure (for playing in a dvd player), your dv video will always be compressed to a valid dvd format -- mpeg-1 or mpeg-2...

But aren't there different level of compression within these two formats?

I suppose one of the questions I am asking is can you get a 1:1 mapping quality-wise from a mini-dv tape onto a DVD. If you see what I mean.

If you can, what bitrate rate do you need adopt?

Dave

dv on minidv tape is compressed at a ratio of about 5.1
Best quality mpeg2 files are compressed at a ratio of about 20.1
dv-avi is about 13gb per hour on your hdd
mpeg2 is about 4gb per hour on you hdd

You cannot get 1.1 dv-avi to mpeg2

[cold2four]

oh boy,, you guys have got me confused now. I'm pretty good with my computer but,,,heehee, maybe I can explain it this way. My tapes have no commercials nor are they home videos. They are hollywood movies. I have accumulated hundreds over the years and I want to copy a selected few to dvd instead of replacing them with a dvd store bought copy.Some are not available on dvd anyway. Problem is, the very first one I captured is a black and white, 93 minutes long. ( 1 hour 33 min. ) But putting that on my hard drive turns into 5.0 GB. That will not fit on a 4.3 GB dvd. I really don't think it can be done. It would have to be captured in a format that would copy it to my HDD in 4.3 GB or less. I hope this helps ya all.Good luck with this one and thanks for all your help so far.

[THoff]

File is is purely a function of Video Length x Bitrate -- if your movie doesn't fit onto a 4.3GB disk, you will have to cut something out, or lower the bitrate (and usually display quality) to compensate for it.

There have been tons of posts about this, search for "bitrate calculator" and you'll find all the info you need.

[rwindeyer]

Hi cold2four- have a look at this post. http://phpbb.ulead.com.tw/EN/viewtopic. ... ht=bitrate

After you have captured your movie, you can process it to a bitrate that will enable it to fit on a single-sided DVD.

Hope that helps.

[sjj1805]

oh boy,, you guys have got me confused now. I'm pretty good with my computer but,,,heehee, maybe I can explain it this way. My tapes have no commercials nor are they home videos. They are hollywood movies. I have accumulated hundreds over the years and I want to copy a selected few to dvd instead of replacing them with a dvd store bought copy.Some are not available on dvd anyway. Problem is, the very first one I captured is a black and white, 93 minutes long. ( 1 hour 33 min. ) But putting that on my hard drive turns into 5.0 GB. That will not fit on a 4.3 GB dvd. I really don't think it can be done. It would have to be captured in a format that would copy it to my HDD in 4.3 GB or less. I hope this helps ya all.Good luck with this one and thanks for all your help so far.

If you find it all too confusing, just create a DVD but burn it to your Hard Drive. then use DVDShrink (a freebie - just type it into a search engine) and it will shrink it to fit. Not as good as doing it manually using the bit rate procedure, but I think you will find you won't notice much difference, your movie should certainly attain VHS quality.